Venezuela agrees medicine supply cooperation with UN

By Senabri Silvestre

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Rep.

The Venezuelan government has reached an agreement with the United Nations to expand cooperation in the supply of medicines to the cash-strapped South American country, according to authorities.

"We have even addressed others mechanisms such as the search for medicines at really affordable prices and how Venezuela has made use of them," Minister of Foreign Affairs Delcy Rodriguez said in a meeting Thursday with UN representatives.

Rodriguez said the administration of Nicolas Maduro is looking at measures to strengthen its food policies and defeat the “false media that tries to sell a humanitarian crisis”.

“We work for the country and for not to succumb to the pressures of the imperial centers of power that pretend to take back the rights of the people”, she added.

Venezuela is struggling in the face of an economic and political bottleneck as citizens complain of a lack of basic supplies and medicine, fueling calls for a recall of Maduro.

The lack of supply in hospitals is of such magnitude that only three percent of the needs are fulfilled, the president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation (FMV) Douglas Leon Natera said Thursday.

The situation has caused a sharp deterioration in the quality and safety of healthcare in the past two years, but Maduro has made limited efforts to obtain international humanitarian assistance, according to the Human Rights Watch (HRW).